Gaming device manufacturers strive to make wagering gaming devices that provide as much enjoyment, entertainment and excitement as possible for players. Gaming tournaments, such as slot tournaments, are exciting for certain players and are a widely used form of casino promotion. Generally, a slot tournament is a group event where a plurality of players pay for or otherwise qualify to join the tournament. The players individually play the tournament on designated gaming machines. These designated gaming machines have the same gaming machine paytables. The players may either play the same number of games, play for the same allotted period of time or play with the same allotted initial amount of money or number of credits. The winner or winners of the tournament are determined based on a highest tournament point score or a highest individual game score. Certain tournament games have been slot games and poker games.
More specifically, in a time based slot tournament, the gaming machines used for the tournament are specially configured gaming machines that, upon the issuance of a start command by a game controller or operator, allow the players to play as fast as they can without requiring the player to input any additional money. For each player, the wins during the tournament are accumulated, held and displayed by the gaming machine as that player's points. At the end of the period of time, all of the gaming machines are disabled. The person having the highest accumulated number of points obtained during the tournament period is the winner. The winner is awarded a prize.
The end of known tournament sessions may be determined by more than one factor, such as when the player runs out of time or credits. For example, each tournament player receives 1000 credits to bet and fifteen minutes to play the game. When the player runs out of the 1000 credits or fifteen minutes pass, the player's tournament game play is terminated.
Tournaments are generally run on specially set-up gaming machines which are commonly grouped together in a dedicated room or area in the casino. Tournament gaming machines grouped in a particular room limits the public's ability to view the tournament. Moreover, these gaming devices are dedicated for playing in a tournament and are therefore not played when a tournament is not in progress. That is, the dedicated tournament gaming machines are only active during tournament play and do not provide player's the ability to play other, non-tournament games on these dedicated gaming machines. This gaming machine dedication is costly to a casino because they take up floor space in the casino and because they are unoccupied or not played for significant amounts of time.
It should be appreciated that even in situations where certain gaming machines are not always dedicated for playing in a tournament, converting the gaming machines for use in the play of a tournament requires extensive set-up for the tournament. For each such tournament, a group of gaming machines is roped off to create a tournament area. Each tournament gaming machine must be taken out of service for a casino worker to switch or adjust the hardware and/or software of the gaming machine, and each of the gaming machines have to be rebooted to implement the specific tournament game. Upon completion of the tournament, a casino worker has to switch or adjust the hardware and/or software of each of the gaming machines back to the original hardware and/or software and reboot each gaming machine for regular or non-tournament play. This time intensive set-up and breakdown of the tournament gaming machines is expensive to the casino because of the idleness of the gaming machines during this time and the cost of the labor for the set-up and breakdown of the tournament. Additionally, certain smaller casinos do not have enough floor space to dedicate certain gaming machines to a tournament. For example, riverboat casinos are often too small to have dedicated tournament areas and are also too small to incur extensive set-up and take down costs for a tournament.
It should also be appreciated that the intensive set-up and breakdown process inherently requires that players play the tournament during the time the gaming machines are in tournament mode. This manner of setup requires an inflexible schedule of play for the players because the players must play the tournament gaming machines at the time allotted by a casino. Certain players often must leave the gaming machine they are playing and go to one of the specific tournament gaming machines to participate in the tournament. Thus, current tournaments do not enable players to play at one's leisure. To incorporate even a small amount of flexibility of when players may participate in the tournament, a casino has to allow the gaming machines to remain in tournament mode for extended periods of time which reduces playing time of non-tournament play and which does not maximize use of floor space. If a casino allows flexibility, a number of gaming machines in tournament mode may be completely unoccupied because players may not be playing them at all times. For example, to have a small window of flexibility, a casino enables the 100 tournament players to play between 8 am and 1 pm and allot 25 gaming machines to the tournament. During the designated time interval (i.e., 8 am and 1 pm) there may be no players on the gaming machines at some points in time, thus wasting valuable gaming machine time and casino floor space. At some points, there may also be players wanting to play the tournament, thereby wasting player time.
Additionally, current tournament modes often require an announcer to inform the players of the tournament schedule or status. Certain players are intimidated or annoyed by such announcers and as a result avoid tournaments so they do not have to listen to the announcers. Additionally, often players must be in a certain range of the tournament room to hear the announcer and be aware of an upcoming tournament. This setup does not provide a way for informing all players of the tournament and other pertinent tournament information.
With no way of informing current players about the tournament, casinos lose out on a valuable marketing tool for the tournament. They also have no way to inform target players who are likely to be interested in the tournament, or to encourage tournament play by informing players of entry requirements.
Therefore, there is a need for a new gaming system to improve aspects of the configuration and implementation of tournament game play.